WCS Climate Adaptation Fund: 2019 Request for Proposals

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has announced a new round of grant-making through its Climate Adaptation Fund – a program to support projects that implement effective interventions for wildlife adaptation to climate change.

Awards will be made to non-profit conservation organizations for applied, on-the-ground projects focused on implementing priority conservation actions in order to adapt to climate change at a landscape scale.

In addition to seeking innovative projects that support the ability of wildlife and ecosystems to adapt to a changing climate, the Climate Adaptation Fund is specifically inviting applications for projects that provide additional co-benefits, in particular those that reduce greenhouse gas emissions through methods like carbon sequestration (i.e., joint mitigation and adaptation, or JMA, projects). WCS is also encouraging projects that include a compelling plan to amplify adaptation outcomes through strategic communications, and that propose novel adaptation approaches or take relatively more common adaptation approaches to new geographies or a larger geographic scale.

The WCS Climate Adaptation Fund will support projects that demonstrate land and water management techniques to assist wildlife and ecosystem adaptations to climate change, for example:

Projects that demonstrate applied management responses for wildlife and ecosystem adaptation, including efforts to enhance the resilience of climate-impacted habitats or facilitate their transition to a different yet functional ecological state.

Projects that enhance or sustain the adaptive capacity of ecosystems, landscape functionality, and critical biological processes in the face of climate change.

Projects that restore and sustain core habitat or create connectivity for fish and wildlife in order to achieve explicit climate adaptation goals.

Pilot projects that exhibit successful on-the-ground actions for climate adaptation that can be replicated across a landscape.

Projects that implement innovative or novel conservation activities in response to existing or expected climate-driven changes.

Projects that mitigate pressures on wildlife and ecosystems caused by current or potential human responses to the impacts of climate changes.

Projects that help wildlife and ecosystems respond and adapt to climate changes while also providing co-benefits, including climate mitigation benefits.

Funding Information

With funding managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the WCS Climate Adaptation Fund will provide up to $2.5 million in competitive grants in 2019.

Grants can be awarded for projects only within the 50 U.S. states and U.S. territories.

The WCS Climate Adaptation Fund is unable to make grants to for-profit corporations, individuals, universities, public agencies, municipalities or other types of government entities.

Public agencies, tribal governments and universities may partner on proposals submitted by an eligible non-profit conservation organization or work as paid contractors on funded projects.

WCS encourages and expects that many project proposals will emerge from collaborations between the applicant organization and any number of partners from academia, public agencies, and other non-profit organizations.